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indianexpress:  FOR the first time, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided not to issue any work order for projects unless the complete Detailed Project Report (DPR) is prepared. Till now, the PMC has been executing many projects including the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) and several road projects with incomplete DPRs. This has resulted in infrastructural projects remaining unfinished or dragging on for years.

The DPR should ideally include engineering drawings, examination of technological parameters, description of the technology to be used,broad technical specification, evaluation of the existing resources, schedule plan, general layout and volume of work.

“The PMC, for the next three months would concentrate on preparing DPRs, including the engineering drawings required for the implementation of the project and only then release the work order,” municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi said during a presentation on projects for the city under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) organised by NGOs Sajag Nagrik Manch, ALERT and Parivartan on Wednesday.

He said the proper implementation of projects, including Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) on the two routes in Hadapsar-Swargate and Swargate-Katraj, were delayed due to the lack of a complete DPR. The hurried implementation of the BRTS came for criticism from Urban Transport director S K Lohia.

According to the central government team that inspected the BRTS last month, what Pune has on the Swargate-Katraj stretch on Satara Road and Swargate-Hadapsar stretch on Solapur Road cannot be called BRTS. The team, that visited the two routes where the project is currently being implemented, said it was merely a dedicated service route.

indianexpress:  WITH a widening property tax base and an increase in octroi and Vehicle Entry Tax (VET) in 2006-07, a result of streamlining the administrative structure, the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) is sitting pretty on cash reserves of Rs 50 crore as against Rs 38 crore in 2005-06.

PCB CEO S K Sardana said, “This year, VET tender alone fetched double the amount we got last year. Besides VET, our octroi share has gone up significantly. As of today, we have a cash reserve of Rs 50 crore parked as fixed deposits in nationalised banks.”
 
Of the total reserves of Rs 50 crore, octroi alone fetched Rs 15 crores, VET Rs 4 crore, hoardings accounted for Rs 1 crore and toll collection stood at Rs 4 crore while the remaining amount came from miscellaneous taxes, fines, service charges, lease proceeds, rents from land and lease, pounding charges, taxes on trades and professions, animals and vehicles including grants from central government.

“The revenues alone are fetching us an interest amounting to Rs 4 crore annually and we are investing the surplus money in various development projects aimed at providing best of civic amenities to cantonment residents,” said Sardana.

With the focus on providing better civic amenities and health services to cantonment residents, the PCB has embarked on a string of citizen-friendly civic projects — the Rs 2 crore Group Water Closets project, Rs 4 crore Morwada nalla beautification project, Rs 3 crore sports stadium at Golibar Maidan and will be spending Rs 4 crore for improvement of roads.

indianexpress: THE special economic zones (SEZs) of Maharashtra are set to face strong protest in the coming days. Pune-based Anti-Globalisation Committee, which has been opposing Reliance Industries’ Navi Mumbai SEZ, on Wednesday announced that it would reach out to college students for generating opinion against the SEZs. It also announced a schedule of events leading up to Independence Day.

Sampat Kale, convener of the committee said it wanted urban people and students to know about the alleged scams surrounding SEZs, like the government’s acquisition of farmers’ land without their permission. “We are approaching colleges in Pune and will have lectures and documentary shows on SEZs and the issue of globalisation,” Kale said.

On Saturday, N D Patil, senior leader of the Peasants and Workers’ Party (PWP) will address people at Pabal, in Shirur taluka of Pune. A lecture by senior environmentalist Vandana Shiva is being arranged on August 13. The next two days will feature agitations in various districts and villages. “The villagers will not allow government officers to survey the land,” he said.

Suniti S R said while the population growth rate in some western countries was negative, India’s population was still on the rise. “We want sufficient farmland for agriculture otherwise the money we will earn from globalisation, will have to spend on import of food items,” she said. “The Centre is also in favour of importing wheat than promoting production in India. The farmers are in trouble because of inadequate pricing of the produce. By implementing SEZs, it is adding insult to it.”

indianexpress: THAT a 7.5 by 6.5 cm plastic sheet with dots conveys days and dates for the entire year, may be hard to believe, but is true. Devised by city-based entrepreneur Vikram Dubal, the sheet is actually a calendar in braille for the visually impaired. Interestingly, the entire calendar is based on a simple theme.

“The calendar leverages the fact that the 1st, 8th, 15th and 29th of any month fall on the same day. Then the whole working is such that the visually impaired find it simple to learn,” explained Dubal.
 
Once the calendar was designed, Dubal visited the students of Pune School and Home for the Blind in Kothrud for testing it. “Students of std IX picked up the logic very fast, the older ones struggled for some time. However, all of them thought the calendar was very useful,” he said.

What is also a highlight of the calendar is its cost. “The cost is minimal. If there is a bulk production of around 50,000 to one lakh, the cost comes down to less than a rupee,” Dubal points out.

For the calendar which took almost four months to make from November last year, the marking in Braille was a challenge.

“A Braille embosser costs more than 3 lakhs. Initially, I found it difficult to get it embossed. However, the Pune School and Home for the Blind printed it out for me,” said Dubal.

Last year, Dubal, who runs a software company, had also designed a cane for the visually impaired that warns them against stray electric signals, thus preventing electrocution. He has in fact been involved for almost three years in coming up with innovations and products for the differently abled to assist themselves.

indianexpress: ROHIT’S parents died of AIDS eight years ago. Today, Rohit a resident of the city’s Tadiwala slums is in standard X at a local municipal school. But not everyone knows he is living with HIV. Rohit’s eyes well up with tears as his small frame has attracted a lot of nasty comments from classmates. “Please do not tell them about my condition,” cries Rohit and recalls how he was directed to sit in one corner of the class in primary school.

For eight-year-old Muskaan studying in a local municipal school in standard IV, memories of her parents dying due to AIDS are vivid. “I was four years old when I realised I had it too,” she says categorically. Muskaan stays with her grandmother at the Tadiwala slum and is eager to talk about how she suffered from tuberculosis.

Rohit and Muskaan will now tell their real life struggle with HIV in a 30-minute documentary titled A Life Less Ordinary that will be premiered in Pune on Saturday. Commissioned by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust in collaboration with Prasarbharati Corporation, the film by Raabiya Jayaram will also be aired on Doordarshan. Ninety per cent of the documentary has been shot in Pune’s Tadiwala slums, Sassoon hospital’s Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) centre, Sahara Aalhad — an NGO that takes care of people living with HIV, and Deep Griha Society’s DISHA project — that takes care of children living with HIV. The documentary also features people living with HIV at NAAZ foundation in New Delhi.

“The documentary is about children living with HIV. It speaks of the vulnerability of children who lose their parents to AIDS. They watch their parents deteriorate and eventually die. Children want to play and have fun and on the other hand have to deal with the trauma of living with HIV, “ says Raabiya. “The documentary depicts the lives of Rohit and Muskaan.”

indianexpress:  PAYING no heed to protests from the employees’ trade union and committee, the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) is going ahead with the privatisation of six corridors in the Pune metropolitan limits. “We have divided the city into six zones. The long routes will be handed over to private players on tender basis while PMT will operate on city routes,” said PMT’s general manager Subrao Patil.

For instance, on the Nigdi route, PMT will operate on Hadapsar-Nigdi while private players will conduct operations on routes like Talegaon Dabhade and Kamshet emanating from the city. “We have narrowed down to such a route system to bring in healthy competition and improve upon our shortcomings,” Patil said.

PMT officials said the plan has been made as the transport body is facing losses on longer routes. Officials maintain, the privatisation is a part of PMT-PCMT merger.

However, the PMT’s trade union is miffed with the privatisation proposal. The PMT Kamgar Sangh (INTUC) has alleged that of the Katraj, Nigdi, Bhosari, Kothrud, Hadapsar and Sinhagad routes that are to be privatised, around 70 per cent are PMT’s profit making routes.

“They have given the profit making routes to private parties. Sinhagad Road has been fully privatised as routes like Dhayari, Wadgaon and Khanapur which are important PMT routes, will be in private hands,” said trade union president Rajendra Kharade.

bbc: Shadows are being used by Japanese researchers as an non-intrusive way for friends to stay in touch.
Called Teleshadow the system pipes video of what people are doing at home via the net to their friends’ houses.

But instead of showing images in full motion and colour, Teleshadow turns them into shadow outlines projected on the inside of a small decorative lamp.

Creator Shunpei Yasuda said the shadow presence system aims to fill the gap between live video and static images.

Mr Yasuda, a post-graduate student in Media Design at Japan’s Keio University, said the inspiration for the system came from Japanese history.

For many years, he said, Japanese homes have had Shoji or paper walls that divide some rooms. The thin walls preserve some privacy but the shadows cast on the paper as people move about also act as a reminder of that person’s presence.

In a similar way Teleshadow preserves privacy while reinforcing presence between rooms that are far apart rather than next door.

 As this is a new media that fits our daily life, it was important to make it as a piece of furniture

Shunpei Yasuda

Also, said Mr Yasuda, the lamp, or andon, that act as the projector is based on a well-known Japanese design.

bbc: Digital photographers could soon be able to erase unwanted elements in photos by using tools that scan for similar images in online libraries.

Research teams have developed an algorithm that uses sites like Flickr to help discover light sources, camera position and composition in a photo.

Using this data the tools then search for objects, such as landscapes or cars, that match the original.

The teams aim to create image libraries that anyone can use to edit snaps.
 
Stage one: The roof is isolated and the algorithm searches for similar scenes

James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed an algorithm to help people who want to remove bits of photographs.

The parts being removed could be unsightly lorries in the snaps of the rural idyll where they took a holiday or even an old boyfriend or girlfriend they want to rub out from a photograph.

To find suitable matching elements, the research duo’s algorithm looks through a database of 2.3 million images culled from Flickr.

“We search for other scenes that share as closely as possible the same semantic scene data,” said Mr Hays, who has been showing off the project at the computer graphics conference Siggraph, in San Diego.

In this sense “semantic” means composition. So a snap of a lake in the foreground, hills in a band in the middle and sunset above has, as far as the algorithm is concerned, very different “semantics” to one of a city with a river running through it.
 
Stage two: It compares photos online to find a matching scene

The broad-based analysis cuts out more than 99.9% of the images in the database, said Mr Hays. The algorithm then picks the closest 200 for further analysis.

Next the algorithm searches the 200 to see if they have elements, such as hillsides or even buildings, the right size and colours for the hole to be filled.

The useful parts of the 20 best scenes are then cropped, added to the image being edited so the best fit can be chosen.

bbc:  As well as showcasing computer graphics, the Siggraph exhibition has also hosted a fashion show featuring garments augmented by technology.
The aim was to show that the merging of textiles and technology can be elegant and need not resemble a robot’s cast offs.

The bikini allows the wearer to recharge their gadgets

One of the more popular creations was designer Andrew Schneider’s solar bikini that overlays the basic swimsuit with narrow strips of photovoltaic film sewn on with conductive thread.

The suit produces a five volt output that, via the attached USB connector, can recharge gadgets like the iPod.

The only drawback is that wearing it means no dip in the pool to cool off.
 
The underwear is designed to be used with associated video games

New media artist Jenny Chowdury describes the “his and hers” bra and boxers set she has designed not as underwear but as a “collaborative videogame platform”.

Intended for couples, the garments have six controller spots on them located at different areas.

Couples play an associated video game by touching the controller panels in sequence, exploiting their intimacy to progress.

Digital cameras reveal the hidden messages in the clothing

Created by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab student Connor Dickie, Kameraflage exploits the CCD and CMOS sensors in digital cameras to add a hidden layer of meaning or interest to clothing.

Designs that are invisible to the naked eye are sewn onto garments. These are then picked up by digital camera sensors when the clothing is photographed

cnn: CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself — until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms.

Sean Darks, the chief executive of Citywatcher.com, points to the VeriChip implant he has in his arm.

 The “chipping” of two workers with RFIDs — radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick — was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.

“To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,” Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. “There’s a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door.”

But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention — a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer’s patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.